1. Field of the Invention
The field of the invention is data processing, or, more specifically, methods, apparatus, and products for applying firmware updates to servers in a data center.
2. Description of Related Art
The development of the EDVAC computer system of 1948 is often cited as the beginning of the computer era. Since that time, computer systems have evolved into extremely complicated devices. Today's computers are much more sophisticated than early systems such as the EDVAC. Computer systems typically include a combination of hardware and software components, application programs, operating systems, processors, buses, memory, input/output devices, and so on. As advances in semiconductor processing and computer architecture push the performance of the computer higher and higher, more sophisticated computer software has evolved to take advantage of the higher performance of the hardware, resulting in computer systems today that are much more powerful than just a few years ago.
One of the areas in which advances have been made is firmware upgrades. Current firmware update methods often involve rebooting a machine in order to run software to update the machine. Often several reboots must occur in order to update multiple firmware components. This problem occurs because multiple vendors of the various devices on a server have independent solutions for updating their firmware. A potential solution is to get all the vendors to agree to a standard firmware update mechanism. This solution is extremely difficult to achieve and does not solve the program of legacy machines that need updating. What is needed is a mechanism that works with the existing firmware update solutions to limit the number of reboots required of a server during a firmware upgrade.